Odd blog about intern following patient
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I'm not sure where this belongs, but I stumbled across it this morning via @Donna Thompson on Twitter and I found it to be a kind of odd blog post:
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Susan, what an interesting and short blog! I was taken with the following comment by the physician shadowing the patient through several appointments:
"Her inconsistencies from one visit to the next bothered me. I had never had the opportunity to see a patient explain her disease so many times in such quick succession. In my mind, her story should have been the same every time so that she could get the most accurate and best treatment.
Naturally, I wanted to know what she was thinking, so I asked Stephanie about her answers. She replied that she tailored her answers based on what she believed the practitioner wanted to hear."
Wow! Every doc should do this. And repeat again every 3-5 years. It would help ground them in the patient experience and help make them better doctors. Thanks for pointing the blog out. Alies
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Hi There
Several years back, I met a lady who was involved with the med school in one of the prairie provinces - Regina as I recall. They had an EXCELLENT program whereby each student was assigned to a patient with a chronic illness and had to attend all appointments with the patient for an extended period of time (eg all term) ... including appointments that conflicted with work, classes, exams, projects, social events, etc. That included doctors, imaging, bloodwork, drug infusions, fasting, PT, OT, pool therapy, signing up for wheeltrans, etc. I'm sure it made the students very aware of the challenges that patients face when their appointments are scheduled on all different days, they wait for excessive amounts of time for providers who are running late, they pay a fortune for parking and have to go out and reload the parking meter as appointments morph, they repeat their story over and over to each provider, they get conflicting advice, etc.
I'm betting this may be what the student was doing who wrote the article you mention. And what a great article it was!
I wish every med school would implement a program like this!
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On a similar note ... I broke my shoulder last fall, and learned that this is a miserable injury. Sensing the doctors' lack of understanding of how my life and my family's life had been impacted, it occurred to me that it would be instructional to ask med students or residents to tie themselves into a shoulder brace or leg brace for a weekend. Tell them they aren't allowed to drive (I was 4.5 months without driving which was a killer), and ask them to set their alarm clock to wake them up every hour all night, just like I was doing. We won't ask them to endure the pain, but I think the above exercise will definitely help them to learn empathy and compassion for their fracture clinic patients!! Once again, real experential learning! Better than any test!
.....N
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That would be me Heatger Thiessen in Saskatoon. I do a lot of work in nursing medicine pharmacy PT etc.
Did you have questions.
Heather
Sent via Groupsite Mobile.
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Hi Heather and Nancy,
At UBC there is a long standing "health mentors" program through the "Patient & Community Partnership for Education" office. It brings together an interprofessional team of students to learn from a person through their interactions with the healthcare system
Here is a link with a full description and further links to look at what's expected of the mentors and the students. Here and here are older videos about the program.
I'd be happy to introduce anyone to mentors and to the program coordinators. This should spread!!
Cheers, Carolyn
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Yes, UBC's Health Mentors program is great. I've been a mentor for 5 cohorts (2012-present) and have worked with 19 future health care providers (nurses, doctors, pharmacy, OT, PT, SLP, Kinesology & dental) and 1 masters program student. It's a tremendous learning opportunity both for the students and the mentors and I have really enjoyed working with them. I have also had the opportunity to volunteer with UBC PT masters program, helping students get their patient interviewing skills and RA assessment skills. Highly recommend it if you are local.
Any questions, just holler.
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I'm delighted to have stimulated some discussion
